Spectra Logic's New Tape System Holds 3.6 Exabytes

Posted on November 09, 2011 By Stuart J. Johnston

Records are made to be broken and, in the case of Spectra Logic, the tape storage maker is shooting pretty high.

"Spectra Logic is introducing the world's highest capacity storage system as well as performance, reliability and data integrity advancements across its complete line of T-Series tape libraries," Boulder, Colo-based Spectra Logic, said in a statement.

"Spectra's new exascale storage capabilities are designed to help organizations safely store and manage massive amounts of data, and are leading a paradigm shift in expectations and requirements for Big Data and Cloud storage," the statement continued.

The top-of-the-line is a high capacity T-Finity ExaScale enterprise tape library capable of storing more than 3.6 exabytes of data and powered by Spectra's BlueScale 12 software.

"A single T-Finity library will now expand to 40 frames for a capacity of up to 50,000 tape cartridges. In a library complex, up to eight libraries can be clustered using Spectra's skyway technology for a capacity of up to 400,000 tape cartridges," Spectra's statement said.

The new Spectra T-Finity with TeraPack bulk media storage is optimally designed for support of Redundant Arrays of Independent Tapes (RAIT), the company said.

The T-Finity libraries support both LTO and IBM TS1140 technology tape drives.

"Spectra Logic has harnessed 32 years of innovation in electronics, robotics, data storage and software to expand the capacity and capabilities of our T-Series tape libraries to meet the needs of Big Data storage environments," Matt Starr, Spectra Logic's chief technology officer, said in a statement.

"We have addressed the unique challenges of exascale data storage -- from ensuring the integrity of each bit of data on the media to delivering the highest capacity storage system on the market. [These] announcements demonstrate Spectra Logic's committed to innovation leadership and to delivering storage excellence for Big Data environments," he added.

Stuart J. Johnston is a contributing editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @stuartj1000.

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